2012-11-22 Poverty

HI there! Today is Thanksgiving although we don't really celebrate this important holiday in here. Teacher, Abbie, still used her own ways to share something interesting and celebrate it with us.

In the end of the class, Abbie introduced a tradition of her family back to the states that everyone takes turn to express something you feel thankful. She helped us to start with "I'm thankful for..." Not just on this special day, we have something to say to show our gratitude, but we all need some inspiration or a chance to express how we appreciate someone or something! The beautiful words from each classmate were really touching and we never know what our plans would turn out until we put them into practice. Sometimes, something better happens when we really try our best!

Today, Abbie started the new topic "Poverty" with her own personal stories and experiences. She mentioned the life before she came to Taiwan and during some specific times she had to be very careful with the budget. She's learned to cherish what she has already had and to make plans more thoroughly. Because we all learn to be better "we" from mistakes and experiences.

Then, Abbie divided us into three groups of five people to brainstorm some ideas about poverty and discuss the definitions of being poor and being in poverty. She provided several questions for us to think about.

(1) What does it mean to be "poor?"

(2) What does it mean to live in poverty?

(3) How can we draw a line to define or distinguish between being wealthy and being poor?

Here are great ideas from everyone tonight:

POOR
1. not enough money but still can sustain your living
2. can survive but lacking supplies or resources
3. economy/material/mental
4. possible to be rich(physically) but poor(mentally)
5. fewer desires leads to less feeling of being poor
6. living by rations during the war times

POVERTY
1. poorer than poor
2. poor area
3. have nothing
4. not enough on the basic level of supplies
5. no access to medicine
6. can't survive with aid
7. need government supply

Jerry and his teammates brought up a famous theory "Maslow's hierarchy of needs" to help us to have better understanding.




After our second break, Neinko presented her first presentation about the speech "Independent Media" from Nov. 1st. She provided some crucial information that most of the mass media in Taiwan are controlled by some certain political parties and conglomerates. Sometimes we just can't receive the real information about the facts. However, some people in Taiwan are working really hard on developing the independent media to show us there are some other things happening and matter around us rather than the most news we see from the mass media.

Again, we had a wonderful night and talked about some serious issues. We all get to learn more from each other and we all have the power to make the world better when we start to make some changes from ourselves!

2012-11-15 POLICTICS


Dear all, today's our second week for the topic "POLITICS."

Most of us feel uncomfortable talking about politics here but our teacher, Abbie, always knows some ways to inspire us to come up with some great innovative ideas about any topic.

From last week, Abbie gave us several questions to think of and asked those to each other. 

(1) What do you think about politics?
(2) Do people in your family talk about politics? Why or why not?
(3) If you had the chance to be the president of the USA, would you take it?
(4) If you had the change to be the president of Taiwan, would you do it?

During the first class of discussing politics, some of us thought politics was a mess and some of us didn't want to talk about it in public or with family. And some felt disappointed about what politicians have brought to our society. However, today we dug a bit deeper into this topic with a few more questions.

(1) If you could create a law, what would you do with it?
(2) What do you think about voter apathy?
(3) What could we have done if the politics were in the ideal situations that we expected?